The White House Wants To Hear From You Concerning Its Strategy For Intellectual Property Enforcement

from the take-this-seriously dept

Victoria Espinel, the White House's Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, has announced the opening of a public comment period for people to give their thoughts to the administration on what it should be doing about "intellectual property enforcement." As always happens with "public comment" periods, expect large filings from big special interests. Also, I wouldn't expect any major change to come from this. However, I would still recommend submitting carefully argued, well-thought-out filings on your thoughts concerning the White House's approach to "enforcing" intellectual property. While I do not always agree with Espinel or the administration in how it handles these things, I have found them to be very open to actually listening to concerns from people -- much more so than other parts of the government that have taken a specific view on these issues and have no interest in budging. Espinel, at the very least, is actually interested in opposing viewpoints and the more detailed, thoughtful arguments she hears, the better. The key part of her request is as follows:

I believe that essential to the development of an effective enforcement strategy, is ensuring that any approaches that are considered to be particularly effective as well as any concerns with the present approach to intellectual property enforcement are understood by policymakers.

I will be submitting my own thoughts, which I will also publish here, but for those thinking about what to say, I would focus on this sentence above. Historically, many of the government's approaches have not been at all effective, and have created a number of significant problems -- most of which have been ignored by the government (either willfully or through ignorance). This really is a chance to provide examples of why the current policy is not effective (and will never be effective if it keeps on the current path) as well as the "concerns" with the current approach, such as the criminalization of expressive behavior and the outright censorship of media publications.

As always, if you are filing comments with the government, make sure to proofread them carefully, and make your arguments clear and persuasive. The details of how to submit can be found here. Submissions are due by July 25th at 5pm ET.

Comments

However, I would still recommend submitting carefully argued, well-thought-out filings on your thoughts concerning the White House's approach to "enforcing" intellectual property.

As with the "consultations" that we have had in the UK you can expect even the most well argued and well thought out suggestions to be dismissed as "factually inaccurate" or some such insulting phrase (When we all know that it is the industry comments that are factually inaccurate).

I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be more effective to come up with some more extreme positions with the objective of moving the "centre ground" in the right direction. After all the other side does this all the time.

I'm not wasting my time with this. It's crystal clear Espinel has no intentions of reading positive feedback and this is based on her past examples of "listening to the public, ignore them, and retain ridiculous copyright restrictions".

She's not the one the letters should be going to. They should be going to politicians. Just be sure to include a Paypal payment. It's the only way they'll make bills turn to laws.

Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement

Is it effective? Ask Kim Dotcom. And I'm still waiting for anyone for the parade of real victims who stored their kids' birthday movies on Kim Dotcom's site before the evil government destroyed it. Yet the parade of sympathetic victims never arrives. The EFF has been out trolling for them months now. When will they have that press conference?

There will be negative effects, but the vast bulk of them will be focused on lazy, cheap jerks who want their content for free. And is that really bad? Not for me and not for anyone who believes in giving the creators control over their hard work. It's not bad for anyone who believes in giving artists a chance to make money on their real talent -- enough money to buy health care.

I personally think there should be more enforcement because piracy is the real censorship. It deprives the creators of the chance to make a living creating. Piracy destroys careers and sends people searching for day jobs.

And don't give me any whining about free this and sharing. Copyright and free sharing can easily co-exist as the open source world shows us. It's all about artists rights and you're all about hating on the artists.

Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement

"anyone who believes in giving the creators control"

Bob, this is the simple thing you fail to understand: it is not automatically obvious that creators deserve total control over what they create. Not everyone believes that, despite what you seem to assume. Some control? Perhaps. Complete control? Nope. Not right, and not possible anyway.

Actually...

I'm really not all that opposed to stricter enforcement. I really could care less if the industry cracks down on criminal commercial infringement.

The problem is that the current laws do not discriminate. All consumers are criminals in the eyes of the current laws, for things we were doing long before the internet evolved. Now technology has evolved and the content industry is lagging far behind and wants Congress to make up for its lack of willingness to adapt.

So yes to stricter enforcement, IF the content industry can A) work out a way to grant us open access for a reasonable fee and B) ratchet back the length of copyright. Two lifetimes is just far too long. Even one lifetime is excessive.

Re: Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement

From the sound of it, I would like to send them something about maybe cutting back the copyright period by... a lot (hopefully for 25 years max). But knowing how corrupt the system is, it's extremely likely they'll never listen to a poor person like me.

... They'll probably lock me up for suggesting such an idea, maybe call me a pirate in the process.

Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement

Copyright and free sharing can easily co-exist as the open source world shows us.

No - sorry they can't.

Free sharing requires that the technology is exploited to minimise the remaining residual cost of copying. This means that mechanisms like bit-torrent and services like Megaupload must be freely available. Otherwise the cost of hosting becomes an issue. You might think that being able to host your own material on your own website addresses the problem but it doesn't. The moment you get significant interest the cost of bandwidth suddenly becomes an issue - or worse you find your site is offline because you've exceeded your bandwidth limit. Bit-torrent and file lockers sidestep this issue.

If those technologies are available then copyright enforcement is not practical - so co-existence is not viable.

Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement

It's actually about middlemen's rights and hating on them. And I'm remarkably okay with that. It's perfectly possible to be anti-IP and still pay for your entertainment. I simply refuse to give any money to an artist that's signed with the RIAA.

Now, I will grant you that I do have an HD antenna and as a basketball fan I did watch the abomination that was this years Finals...so I suppose that since I was watching that for free (whilst ignoring the commercials) I was in fact stealing it. Now I suppose that Kevin Durant is going to come to my house to rough me up.

Re: Re:

Arguments to use

I strongly believe this enforcement should be a civil matter, so I remain confused and concerned why it is being treated as a criminal issue.

That being said, we should tell the White House about the overwhelming negative effects of forceful disconnection from the Internet. Everything from bill payments to schoolwork is now done on-line, so the punishment does not fit the 'civil infringement.'

Next, let's look at the many (many) ways that identification is flawed. Unlike a fingerprint or a mugshot, an IP address is not a person. It is almost nonsensical that the government could be considering legal actions on what is, in actual fact, hearsay. I seem to recall a TechDirt article from two weeks ago where an EU minister (or some such) was accused of downloading infringing content and the response was "innocent until proven guilty' - except that isn't what is proposed with 3 strikes laws.

Finally, let's talk about the failed war on drugs. The fact that a high percentage of young black men will be forever part of the penal system (either currently incarcerated or stuck with the stigma on their record), and all of the attendant social ills that causes (absentee fathers, inability to earn an education or job skills), should provide guidance here. Additionally, the government exacerbates the drug problem by creating a two-tier system of justice (reference penalties for crack vs. cocaine, which is really black vs. white). I fully expect that model to be used here for the war on infringement. This will become yet another way to disenfranchise a group of people - namely, those that are either too poor or too smart to pay Hollywood's premium for digital (unreal) goods.

I encourage everyone to use the comment system at the White House. But do it smart and put forth rational arguments.

Re: Comments

Agree.
They are fishing for reasons to enforce copyright MOAAR HEAVILY, by pushing in a direction, you have to push harder in the other direction.Once it becomes "Law".... NO fucking chance of removing it.

I am afraid that in all reality, logic is not now the middle ground and all the well reasoned arguments are ignored.
Showing them moaar reasonable arguments is in all probability, just another "thief rationalizing their evil actions"
Moving the middle ground (to reality) is what is required.
How you do that is a good question.

Copying is NOT theft.
Counterfeiting is not the same as filesharing.
One copy does NOT equal one lost sale.
The internet thrives while old media dies.
People make a fortune giving out their work on the internet.
Copyright is TOO EXTREME
Copyright does NOT work on the internet
NO copyright would be better for the internet than todays copyright

Copyright Monopolies War on culture and people sharing
If you don't reform copyright to be more lenient and adaptable to the internet, it should be abolished online.(counterfeiting and fraud will exist but they have laws )

Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement

"Is it effective? Ask Kim Dotcom."

Well, since the case is rapidly falling apart and the U.S. is basically grasping at any straw it can to try and keep it's case from being laughed out of New Zealand, where they need to prove they have enough evidence to extradite Dotcom, I don't feel much of a need to ask Kim Dotcom anything. And I fail to see how that is any sign of whether enforcement is effective.

Then again, you're bob. So let me ask you, how did enforcement work out with Dajaz1. Wasn't there rampant piracy on there? Per RIAA claims. Where did that lead? Oh, that's right. Nowhere. See bob, if you want to cherry pick key points, it makes your claims sound righteous and correct, but when you look at the big picture, those of us with a clue and with the ability to not view everything as a vast Google orchestrated conspiracy, can see that you're flat out wrong and enforcement is failing left and right.

"And I'm still waiting for anyone for the parade of real victims who stored their kids' birthday movies on Kim Dotcom's site before the evil government destroyed it. Yet the parade of sympathetic victims never arrives. The EFF has been out trolling for them months now. When will they have that press conference?"

Well, it wouldn't matter would it. The U.S. has already effectively declared it's not their problem. And the people can't very well petition Megaupload to release their stuff now, can they? And Carpathia is the one left holding the bag to keep those servers maintained and running (to a degree), so I doubt they'd want to foot the bill for that as well. But I doubt the EFF wants to have a press conference before they're prepared to move forward. As I mentioned above, the Megaupload was a huge blow for copyright enforcement... and the U.S. let the world know that, ditto Dajaz1. Til, you know... the entire case fell apart and they were forced to let things quietly return to normal. Making a huge statement tends to backfire, especially if you can't back it up. "Mission Accomplished" being one of the best I've ever seen in my life. Man, the ridicule that one banner brought was insane. Again, your point isn't much of a point at all.

"There will be negative effects, but the vast bulk of them will be focused on lazy, cheap jerks who want their content for free. And is that really bad? Not for me and not for anyone who believes in giving the creators control over their hard work. It's not bad for anyone who believes in giving artists a chance to make money on their real talent -- enough money to buy health care."

bob, negative effects are being felt already, on most of them on legitimate services and companies. Cloud computing took a blow 10 years ago in the mp3.com suit. Where we are now is where we should've been a decade ago, ten years later and we're back to suits and attempts to stifle innovation and put us back yet another ten years. The only difference is now some big companies have stepped into the game and can quite easily take on the legacy industries trying to stifle innovation. Google, Amazon, Apple, Dropbox and a few others. And even then they're being forced to make sacrifices. Lest we forget that early on Amazon and Google were both being bitched at for allowing people to upload their music. Now Dropbox has had to do away with public folders. As an XDA Developers Forum member, that is quite the problem for someone who loves to share and download ROMs, which are created from the Android Open Source code provided by Google. Now we have to find new methods to share such things, just because someone MAY use Dropbox to share a song.

And I'm not a pirate. I pay for the content I consume, mostly books (because I can do without the latest Hollywood Michael Bay suckfest, if I want to be stupidly entertained I'll just get drunk and watch my friends argued, much more value for my dollar that way and I lose less brain cells).

And if you really cared about creators and giving them control over their hard work, rather than sit around blasting Google and pirates all day long, like you do, you'd harp at the labels and studios who try and wrangle away copyright control from the actual creators. You'd seek to make them leveraging their power against creators through contracts to gain creative control over the creators copyrighted material.

"I personally think there should be more enforcement because piracy is the real censorship. It deprives the creators of the chance to make a living creating. Piracy destroys careers and sends people searching for day jobs. "

Piracy is not censorship. Fuck. I hate explaining censorship day in and day out to morons like you. I'm not gonna do it today. If anyone wants to handle this, please by all means do so.

It, piracy, deprives no one of nothing. You can still try and make a living. That's all any of us do. If you can't make it, for any reason, you find something else to do. That's how things work. HMOs moved in to my area of Texas, many in the health care field have lost their jobs. Guess what? They didn't sit around bitching. They learned new skills or found new opportunities for employment. And life moved on.

Show us one example, one legitimate example of a career destroyed by privacy. We'll wait. We also want proof backing up said example. Irrefutable proof. You say piracy destroys careers, now back it up.

"And don't give me any whining about free this and sharing. Copyright and free sharing can easily co-exist as the open source world shows us. It's all about artists rights and you're all about hating on the artists."

When you can go a day without whining about Big Search and Big Hardware you can tell others not to whine about sharing, til then stfu.

As for artists, that's right bob. We hate them all. That's why I'm going to get a ticket (or two, one for my girl too) to Louis C.K.'s show as soon as he's near us. Or near enough that we can go see him easily. That's why other people on this site donated to Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter project. That's why Mike wrote about Dan Bull making the charts, with a single only available on one of those horrible websites. /s

Re: Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement

Re: Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement

Sorry dude. Open source flourished long before bittorrent. And the file lockers and bittorrent don't sidestep the issue, they just push the price onto someone else's back. The cost of bandwidth is still there, it's just that the downloader must pay more of it.

So we don't need to have Pirate Bay to have open source. Heck, most of the open source companies have proprietary arms and they use the proprietary software to cross-subsidize the open stuff. Yup. Without copyright, this open source software wouldn't exist.

Re: Re: Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement

"they just push the price onto someone else's back. The cost of bandwidth is still there, it's just that the downloader must pay more of it."

Really? I don't see my ISP bill go up when I use bittorrent. Maybe that's because the only cost to me is my time? I can only download so much at a time, so I have to chose what I want to spend that download time on.

"Without copyright, this open source software wouldn't exist."

That's a flat out lie and you know it. People make open source software for three reasons: Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. They have the freedom to decide what they create (autonomy), they gain proficiency through creating it (mastery), and it gives them meaning in what they do (purpose). That's what makes open source exist. It's also why people learn to pain, sing, play an instrument, etc. Sure, the money helps, but it isn't mandatory. It's also for those reasons that creativity and art will continue to progress, even if copyright disappears. Copyright isn't an inevitability, it's a crutch for weak business models.

I think it's important that people do write in with their opinions so that others can't turn around and say that no one raised any issues. All too often, it seems, those against strict IP laws fail to register clear, well written arguments in a great enough volume to be noticed. And poorly written opinion pieces probably do more harm than good.

Re: Of course it's effective-- you just don't like any enforcement

Your comment only shows ignorance. I've pirated lots of video games. Yet somehow, the price of all of the games I own totals to about $700. That $700 would have never been spent had I never pirated anything. Hell, I'd still be a console gamer. I started by pirating Garry's Mod. Then I pirated most games made by Valve. I played them for a while, I really liked them. Then I saw a retail copy of Counter Strike: Source at Walmart. That's when I decided to go legit. By the end of that year, I had bought everything I had pirated. I also bought Portal 2 when it came out, which I would have never heard of, much less bought, had I not pirated anything. At one time I also pirated TES IV: Oblivion. That led to me purchasing that. I also purchased Fallout: NV and all its DLC, I bought Fallout 3, and I bought Skyrim. I also plan to buy its DLC when they end their stupid timed exclusive. If I never pirated Oblivion, however, I might have not bought any of this. Because of the fact that my piracy has led to me buying twice as much to support the game developers, I am not ashamed of being a pirate.

Re: Re:

For decades, all we've heard from the White House is "We're supporting Hollywood" despite the majority opposition.

We're talking about the same politicians who received the following memo from Disney:

"To our President,
For all the years of supporting our draconian changes in copyright law, we bestow upon the White House our facilities in Florida to use at any time and free of charge. Just bring your own ice."

Next thing we see is I.C.E. taking center stage bragging how they took down websites without due process.

Re: Re: Re:

Re: Arguments to use

I am 99% sure that they recently fixed the "two-tier" system to make crack penalties equal to cocaine. The original penalties still stand for those jailed under the old system, though. It is not retroactive.

Re:

Re:

Dear Mr/Ms musician,

Please continue using that guitar I built without paying me royalties every time you use it. I'm broke and it is unfair that you continue to make money with my hard work. I am forming a new collection society and they will be by with an extortionate offer shortly.

Re: Re:

Seriously? This argument is terrible. There's a difference between physical products and content that is streamed from the inter-web. Buying an instrument, or a CD, or a DVD, or a record… Requires only one payment upfront… Or multiple payments if you are using some kind of credit offer. Why? Because it's a physical product. You have bought one of the units that were manufactured and intended to use it for the rest of your days… Or for however long it is in your possession. However… When you stream content off of the Internet… You are not in possession of it… It is offered on a continuous basis providing you have access to it. Therefore… It stands to reason that artists and content distributors as well as publishers… Make money based on a consumption basis. I honestly don't understand why people are complaining so much about current copyright laws… How many of you pirate music? Are you among the great elite who believe that art and music should be free? If so that is complete crap and would stifle artistic advancement. It would also take away the opportunity for many people to get out of poverty. All you people are concerned about is what you can get and what do you think you deserve. You have no consideration for anyone else… And the funny thing is many people who make these arguments are so quick to blame capitalism… Yet they suffer the same greed that they so valiantly renounce. And besides… The free culture movement is currently supported by some of the world's largest corporations. Sorry folks… Free culture over all would not work. You're going to have to get over it. Oh… And yes… As far as intellectual property is concerned, the creator should retain control over how that property is presented to the public. They came up with it, and it is there right in their duty to oversee its distribution according to how they see fit. I honestly do not understand people who do not believe that creators of content should not have control over their intellectual property… That is absolutely disgusting and selfish. You are so quick to blame industry and big corporations for all of these "restrictions "yet you forget about the hundreds of independent content creators out there Who are just trying to make a living at what they do.

And seriously… The only people who are worried about strict copyright enforcement are people who think that it's okay to pirate content. You see… I am one of those weird people who believes that content providers should be compensated fairly… Therefore I have no problem purchasing music, movies, books, and other media. It takes time and money to produce content just like it takes time and money to produce anything else… And peoples incomes should not be dictated just because of the profession they choose. Ironically… It is the people who believe the copyright should not be so strict who have a problem with greed.